1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to fingerprint capture devices, and more particularly to an ink-on-paper type-4 fingerprint capture device and a method for detecting and thwarting fingerprint substitution fraud.
2. Description of the Related Art
In today's security conscious environment, large numbers of subjects not involved with the criminal justice system need to be fingerprinted efficiently and effectively to facilitate background verification. These subjects include literally millions of individuals seeking employment, individuals seeking professional certifications, volunteers and mentors for churches, 4-H, YMCA, and schools, and millions of other paid workers in numerous professions such as banking, securities, insurance, realty, and many more. Some of these subjects are highly motivated felons indulging a compulsion to molest children or do other harm who readily engage in impersonation and other forms of identity fraud to further their criminal ambitions.
Fingerprints of noncriminal subjects are typically captured by electronically scanning the fingers of the individual, or by making ink impressions of each of the individual's fingers on a standard paper card for electronic scanning at a later time. In either case, the scanned fingerprints are examined to ensure that they are suitable for processing by an Automatic Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) operated by state law enforcement or Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) authorities using type-4 (rolled) or type-14 (flat) impressions. Obtaining fingerprint impressions is termed “capture.” Transmitting fingerprints to an AFIS and participating in an AFIS identification process is termed “query.” In order to capture sufficiently unique image data from the impression of a subject's finger to perform a type-4 query matching the millions of fingerprints currently on file, more fingertip area is needed than is typically transferred when a subject simply presses their fingertip flat against a paper card or a glass scanner plate as is required for type-14 queries. It is therefore preferable to have a subject roll their fingertip across a fingerprinting medium from one lateral edge of their fingernail to the opposite lateral edge of their fingernail to produce a wider impression that shows more unique fingerprint patterns. AFIS performance is thereby improved and the occurrence of rejecting a fingerprint record due to an insufficient sample, termed “reject rate,” is significantly reduced. Even still, well documented FBI reject rates for ink-on-paper type-4 cards are typically on the order of 20%. This means that one in every five persons submitting rolled fingerprints on cards will be asked to submit another card, thereby requiring a subject to return to a fingerprinting site to have his fingerprint's recaptured. In the case of electronic live-scanned fingerprint capture, time spent repeating the scan of a subject's fingers due to insufficient samples can cause substantial delays and can be a serious impediment when attempting to fingerprint a large group of people in a fixed amount of time.
In the past, a problem frequently associated with poor quality rolled fingerprint impressions on paper cards has been that, while rolling a subject's selected finger onto a paper card, the other fingers of the subject on the same hand tend to get in the way, thereby causing the selected finger to squirm or slide which smudges or distorts the fingerprint impression.
Similarly, electronic live capture methods for acquiring fingerprints have been associated with a number of significant disadvantages: they require a costly trained operator; they only capture the prints of one subject at a time; they require expensive equipment; they require subjects to undertake costly and inconvenient travel; subjects typically must wait, often for extended periods of time, at commercial fingerprint service centers or at unaccommodating police booking rooms; and those who administer such live capture methods typically cannot guarantee that the person whose prints they capture is the same individual who was sent to them for that purpose.
Accordingly a need exists for a mechanism and a method for capturing fingerprint impressions that are suitable for AFIS matching from large numbers of live persons simultaneously that can be implemented without the aforementioned disadvantages.